« January 2007 | Main | March 2007 »
The Theater District has bigger problems than a lack of flashing lights. But a Jumbotron (or four) would be a nice change from the dark, boring atmosphere that exists down there now.
Landsdown Street and the Waterfront? I'm not so sure.
The LA Times has a blog dedicated strictly to keeping up with murders in the city.
Steve Bailey brings us another chapter in the saga of the millionaire "nutty professor" who, it's alleged, shot himself to implicate his sons with whom he's involved in a drawn-out legal battle.
Bailey describes (and links to!) Professor John Donovan's website which, unfortunately now is down and can only be accessed with a password.
100% pure Capsaicin crystal on your scrambled eggs --- what a way to start the day. There's also a guide to less lethal hot sauces.
Housing developments, or projects as they used to be called, were built in the post-war period and the old boxy, brick construction style hasn't aged very well. Many are being renovated into town-house neighborhoods, Orchard Gardens and Mission Main (previously Orchard Park and Mission Hill projects) are two good examples.
Franklin Hill development, laid out around a large, barren central courtyard, is overdue for change. Local photographer Atyia has documented the first step in the process.
Carpundit picks up on the Chicago Police using their blog to ask questions about precious metals.
The CPD blog is new with its first post last month. That initial post is a routine press release and doesn't say much about the site. I'm not sure if the blog is designed for internal conversations (the slogan "Of the Police...By the Police...For the Police" would make you think so) and if so, why it is outside the firewall.
Nice design and graphics, though. Good conversational style. Worth watching.
UPDATE: Here's the post that explains things.
Year of the Boar? Year of the Pig? So which one is it? Wikipedia to the rescue:
...every twelfth year corresponds to Hai, and is commonly called "the Year of the Pig" (豬年). Less commonly, it is also called "the Year of the Boar", for two reasons. First, the character 豬, which denotes pigs generally in Chinese, is used in Japanese to refer specifically to wild boars. Secondly, the pig has negative connotations in some Western cultures, and may even be considered a profanity. In official usage among English-speaking countries, Singapore and the United States prefer the term "Year of the Boar", while Commonwealth countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom prefer the term "Year of the Pig".
There you have it.
We're used to it in music and show-biz, but are we ready for a one-name president?
A third of internet users connect wirelessly. Wi-fi use has doubled since 2005 according to a Pew study. Which brings me to a pet peeve: Starbucks and T-Mobile.
The business model in which you pay for casual wireless access was based on business users in airports, not normal people in coffee shops and bookstores. Normal people don't pay ten bucks an hour, one shot, to sit in Starbucks to access the internet when it's free at home, especially when, on top of paying, you have to navigate through a famously unwieldy and frustrating sign-up process.
Starbucks puts those comfy chairs in their stores to bring people in. Makes sense. T-Mobile is that hard, uncomfortable chair in the corner with the nails poking through that you have to pay to sit in. That, I don't get.
Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond are related by blood? This has the makings of a media circus. In fact, it's already begun.
A new political party rising out of Boston? It has a manifesto and everything. (Via Jay Fitzgerald via Chris Cagle.)
Two problems: Wiki-laws (very bad idea) and the fact that it has no name; everything needs a snappy name. Oh, and another thing: web entrepreneur Dan Zarrella appears to be behind it all.
UPDATE: It just occurred to me that if a wiki is such a good way to write laws, shouldn't one have been used to come up with the "We demand..." ten points of the manifesto?
Al Gore is getting more and more buzz these days. Is he going to run? Here''s a Fark'ers spin on a CNN story:
CNN reports hard-hitting, well-researched, completely made-up speculation that Al Gore's 2008 Presidential bid could begin at the Oscars....
And we haven't even gotten David Geffen's take yet!
(Also, a great line in the Fark comments about "inconvenient truthiness." Wish I came up with that one myself.)
Dan Kennedy schools Paul Levy on the copyright issues involved with cutting and pasting entire news articles into blog posts. Adding a link to the source, he notes, doesn't absolve the sin.
Levy got it, but, as Dan's commenters suggest, a lot of other bloggers don't. Cited were Pundit Review and Common Dreams. Steve Gilliard's News Blog (new link) is another offender. Even BPDNews has had some issues with this, but I think those are mostly in the past.
The Seinfeldesque Pierre Bayard lectures his students in how to appear well-read without having read books.
Mr. Bayard reassures them that there is no obligation to read, and confesses to lecturing students on books that he has either not read or has merely skimmed. And he recalls passionate exchanges with people who also have not read the book under discussion.
Of course to really get the trick down you'll have to read his book, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, all the way to the end.
The Weymouth Town Council has gone to the opposite extreme from Boston Councillors who are laying out foreign policy. They, are focusing their publicly-funded efforts on the very local and equally meaningless subject of the wearing of hats in the council chambers.
These are all great arguments for part-time, half-salaried local politicians.
Lesson 1: It's not what you actually do or whether what's written about you is accurate or fair, it's how you react to whatever is written about you. I think Patrick should have gotten out in front of this earlier but hopefully, now, he's learned a valuable lesson.
While in Vegas, I ran into a young photographer named Perry Smyre who was doing a job for Rolling Stone. Here's some of his work. Good stuff.
It looks like David Geffen (and/or Maureen Dowd) has been successful in igniting intercine warfare among the Democratic frontrunners. Unfortunately for Obama, the Clintons are battle-hardened.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Hillary tried to turn elite Hollywood A-listers' support for Obama against him? Stay tuned.
I recently finished Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's book on Mao, which I highly recommend. His record of atrocities is unmatched, even by Stalin. (Strangely (in literary terms, at least), at Amazon, it's paired with The Diary of Ann Frank.) Anyway, this story, on what Mugabe is doing to Zimbabwe, is right out of Mao's playbook.
I'd missed this before being alerted by a friend: Robert Adler, inventor of the TV remote and father of the couch potato, died last week.
The Washington Post highlights the dilemma of a centrist Democrat being attacked by Liberal bloggers.
Good account of yesterday's Barnstable shooting from a delivery man for the Cape Cod Times.
Back in town and catching up. Dan Kennedy links to at Times article about a online newspaper success story and suggests that whatever VG is doing right, it isn't the design of the page.
Take a look for yourself. It's certainly not boring. (... and there's Dilbert in Norwegian!)
A waitress patrols the casino at the Mirage.
Cold beer, dirty girls. What more can you say.
A couple bonds at the slots.
Cruizin the Strip.
Cruizin the Strip.
A waitress at Gilley's.
Folks lined up at the fence-line to watch the ho-down.
Meanwhile, back on the Strip.
Lanterns in the casinos.
Good luck celebration.
The Eiffel Tower amid the palms.
A fountain outside the Venetian.
Poker at the Wynn.
An abandoned lounge at the Mirage.
Prime Rib priced to go at the Frontier.
A long walk down the hotel hallway.
Getting out of Vegas was a lot harder than getting in. This is the Airport on Monday.
I was in Vegas for the NBA All Star Game. Not that I'm a huge basketball fan but, well, it's a long story.
Ultimately the West walked away with the win.
Cheerleaders from the West practice their routine before taking the court.
An easy 3.
Dr. J. was in the house.
... as was Paris Hilton -- sans entourage (unless you want to count the disheveled guy in the black Polo shirt.)
... as was Prince
... as was Mary J. Blige.
Cheerleaders from the East wait for thier cue...
And they're on!
When the truth lies somewhere in the middle, as it often does in incidents like the bridge shooting in New Orleans after Katrina, a comprehensive investigation is critical. Granted, in the chaos of those days there were challenges to conducting an ideal investigation, but what was done appears to fall short of what should or could have been done.
And it's not a sign of confidence in law enforcement in New Orleans that the Guardian Angles are patrolling this year's Mardi Gras.
I took a walk up to the north end of the Vegas Strip this morning. The Stardust hotel is one of the oldest and storied in Las Vegas. It's now closed and is scheduled for implosion next month. The famous sign is being taken apart and will be preserved in the Neon Museum.
Note the sky showing through the frame of what's left of the hotel tower.
Jay Fitz points to a sad story in the devolution of the city of New Orleans.
Rock music's appeal is in its attitude and the attitude comes from the disillusion of youth. That being said, some things about music benefit from age and one of them, it seems, is the craft of making heavy metal.
It's always fun when a local politicians meddle in world affairs. What is it about being a city councillor that makes you think you can also do brain surgery and drive a race car.
The Boston City Council is not alone in this. Cincinnati voted a resolution into law, last week, opposing the Iraq war, as did Minneapolis. In Detroit, the council tackled both Iraq and Dafur. New York also took on Sudan. In Dallas the city council may even have signed on to the Kyoto Protocals.
But the area champs of acting non-locally are the Cambridge City Council who have dabbled in everything from immigration to nanotechnology to the war to Starbucks to the Patriot Act.
Five, maybe six inches of snow in Boston and it's being called a Major Winter Storm and the Storm of the Season. Most years this would be considered just another minor storm but this year it is, literally, the storm of the season.
If it isn't oil from Venezuela, it's roses from Columbia. What's a conscientious consumer to do?
Florida congressman Connie Mack criticized Joe Kennedy, not for utilizing Venezuelan oil, but for praising Hugo Chávez in the process. Kennedy's response:
Once we've followed the Mack Doctrine and refused oil from every country that fails to meet our disciplined moral standards, I'm sure you'll enjoy your walks to Washington, because there certainly won't be fuel to fly you there...
I hope Joe Kennedy is being disingenuous to preserve his entrenched position. The alternative would be that he doesn't understand the difference.
(Earlier on Chavez)
McCain and Lieberman come out against keeping our 'heads in the sand' on global warming. Good for them.
One study and I'm convinced. Let's adopt the afternoon siesta. Then a double shot of expresso to get back on track.
This is an unwelcome Monday morning image, courtesy of the Washington Post: Close Look at Human Arm Finds Host of Microbes.
...Virtually every orifice and the digestive tract are swarming with bacteria, fungi and other microbes. By some estimates, only one out of every 10 cells in the body is human.
It's something to think about while riding to work in that crammed subway car. Thanks, WaPost.
More, if you're interested, here.
Check these winter sunset photos by Adam Gaffin.
It's been a tough year for fishermen off the New England Coast. Brian McQuarrie profiled a couple of boats out of New Bedford in a Sunday Globe story. Good subject matter and some great writing to boot. Check out the last few paragraphs.
I probably agree with most of what Andrew Graham believes but his op-ed is an unfocused mess.
The music industry isn't confused, it's greedy; desperate; and litigious. The mix tape guys aren't artists, they're businessmen. Competitors. So the industry hit them with all they had. Nothing to be befuddled about there.
And what does any of this have to do with Berdovsky and Stevens other than providing a cheap opportunity to slam the reliably clueless "Man?"
Jay Fitz and the folks at CelticsBlog are all over "the streak," the former unable to turn away as the Celtics plunge into the depths and the latter just hoping for a win and the restoration of a semblance of dignity for the team.
It's spelled different ways, but no matter how you slice it, it's AAAAAAAA!
The Globe's letters section includes links to the original articles. I was able to go back and read a Bruce Mohl article on debit card charges that I missed the first time around. That's the way it's supposed to work.
This one's from this afternoon, taken at a favorite spot.
Snow fence winding around the dunes in Rexham.
(Ha. I just noticed the shadow from my elbow on the bottom right. So much for attention to detail.)
A fall photo from along the North River.
Was that a Buzzcocks's song playing in an AARP commercial on TV last night?
Apparently it was. We're going to be insufferable when we're the old folks.
The Empire State Building is America's favorite work of architecture according to a survey by the American Institute of Architects. Sites in New York and Washington dominate the top 100 and Chicago has its share.
Alas, Boston City Hall didn't appear to make the cut.
Two (count em') Globe op-eds today on the Obama / Clinton, Clinton / Obama dilemma facing many people. The solution, of course, is 'Clinton/Obama 08'. But it's way too early to talk about that.
There's no reason not to sign up for one of these accounts.
I ran across a link to Steve McQueen's Bullitt car chase video yesterday on Digg. Best movie car chase ever, as far as I'm concerned. But two others come close: Ronin and French Connection.
Rents are more affordable here than in other parts of the country where they are lower. Higher salaries in these parts drive that math.
Something being affordable and being able to afford that something are often two different things, though.
Steve Jobs has his own reason for advocating for DRM-free music downloads and if he gets his way, it would be good for the rest of us too.
I'm still trying to sort out Jeff Jacoby's point in this column. First, he attacks the media for misrepresenting a recent UN Report on global warming as being a UN Report on global warming. The media, apparently, based stories on the executive summary of the report and not on the report itself, which hasn't yet been released in it's entirety.
Where's the beef?
Next, he agrees that there's no doubt that climate change is occurring but criticizes the media for not featuring scientists that say it isn't happening. ...Or ones that admit that it's happening but say it's a good thing, at least in the short run. ...Or who take comfort in the fact that Mars is warming too.
The existence of other opinions doesn't argue against there being a consensus. As far as the media coverage, Jacoby himself is carrying the ball on getting the alternative arguments out there. And based on this column, he doesn't appear to have a whole lot of raw material to work with.
Better call Dr. Bellows in for this one.
Sure, Tom Reilly ran a tragic-comically inept campaign for Governor but that shouldn't take away from the very capable work he did as AG. And being bad at politics doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. Au contraire.
I'm glad the folks at Greenberg Traurig feel the same way.
I remember reading an article in Stereo Review magazine sometime in the nineteen eighties, back when digital audio tape was the next big thing. The author noted that someday in the future music would be sold and played on solid-state, no-moving-parts memory chips. Ridiculous, I thought. Impossible. Well here it is.
Still waiting for those flying cars.
If you have any free time today, you could apply it to one of these.
Here's the perfect Valentines Day (yes, check the calendar) gift for the Fifty Foot Woman.
Hmmm. This Globe business column looked interesting. It started with a short blurb on guidelines for how to manage a conference call.
...Here is a great set of guidelines to help ensure you don’t have a botched call. They cover everything...
But "here" in this case doesn't take you anywhere via hyperlink or even refer to anything. There was a hint that the guidelines might be found at Web Worker Daily. Again, no link. At Web Worker Daily, a search for Teleconference came up empty so I manually went back through five pages of archives before I found the teleconference guidelines. Whew!
I know there's probably a technical reason that the story didn't contain the appropriate hyperlink (it did contains some others) but I really don't care. This is inexcusable from the reader's point of view.
Susan Milligan notes that second tier candidates are also-rans before they've even begun their campaigns. Not everyone thinks this is a good thing.
"It's crazy right now. It's insane. It started way too early, and it started way too big," said Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic State Committee. "People are talking about horse-race stuff right now, and it's way too early to be doing that. We should be talking about issues, and we're not."
Nonetheless, it doesn't look like there's anything that will stop this process.
The football was sloppy. Prince was all wet. But the real disappointment was in the commercials. Most seemed to be ads for CBS's own TV shows. Does that mean that they couldn't sell the time at Super Bowl prices this year?
The smart and powerful set are talking about how the internet is all about empowering individuals. But that's very 1990s. Today it's more about social networks and collective action.
Jeff Jarvis is at his best in this report from Davos.
Adam discovered a video which led me to this guy's collection of sometimes four-a-day YouTube videos.
It would be easy to make fun, but, for all I know the guy is a shut-in, so that's not my intention. I might be the last person to realize that this is happening but I find it fascinating that people are socializing and having conversations at this rate through YouTube.
UPDATE: Companies are making commercials exclusively for YouTube distribution. David Pogue has it right that these types of ads have to be entertaining to survive, and extremely appealing to gain wide distribution. And that's good for us.
Let this flash run long enough and it will go into a frenzy of Boston accents. Great stuff.
Apparently you can show the Superbowl on TV in a bar -- but not in a church.
That sounds odd. Not the fact that people are watching football in church (although that is pretty strange) but the cease and desist warning to churches from the NFL.
Would you buy a hamburger at Dunkin Donuts? French fries at Starbucks? Why would anyone buy coffee at McDonalds?
But I guess its Newman's blend is getting good reviews. Still, I'll stick with double D's. It may not be the best gourmet coffee in the world, but it's almost always fresh.
Fourteen columns in ten publications cover inside the Beltway gossip. And that's not counting blogs! From today's WaPost:
As the globe warms, Iraq burns and a presidential campaign heats up, Washington finds itself red-hot in gossip, or what passes for such here. Never in memory has the political world been so awash in items about every little burp and wart and appendectomy of our nation’s leaders.
I had no idea politicians were that interesting.
The CDC has released guidelines for how to handle a flu outbreak. This is serious stuff:
...In the event of a severe flu outbreak, schools should close for up to three months, ballgames and movies should be canceled, and working hours should be staggered so subways and buses are less crowded...
We can hope we don't get to that point, but most experts believe it's more a question of when than if.
Steve Bailey's take on Wednesday's events is as good as any I've seen so far.
